THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING

THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; Humor is the catalyst in a new $40 million campaign for Kinko's.

By Stuart Elliott

Published: January 11, 1999

DID you feel warm and fuzzy when AT&T urged you to ''Reach out and touch someone''? Did your eyes tear when Hallmark cajoled you to ''care enough to send the very best''?

If you answered yes, you are among the intended audience for an ambitious campaign from a leading business services marketer. The campaign, which begins today, uses humor to help convince consumers that presentation materials, color copies and video conferences should be considered ways to communicate along with telephone calls and greeting cards.

Kinko's Inc., which operates more than 900 retail stores in 9 countries, is introducing the campaign as part of a marketing effort with a budget of $40 million. The campaign, which carries the theme ''Express yourself,'' includes television, print and outdoor advertising; a redesigned Web site (www.kinkos.com); promotions and public relations.

The campaign is the first for Kinko's by the TBWA/Chiat/Day unit of Omnicom Group since the agency's Playa del Rey, Calif., office was awarded the account in July. Previous ads portrayed Kinko's as ''Your branch office'' and ''The new way to office,'' whatever that meant.

''Kinko's was focusing internally, talking about the functional side, the buildings and machines,'' said Ellen Turner, senior vice president for marketing and sales at Kinko's in Ventura, Calif. ''We knew we needed to change the lens to focusing back on the customer, the benefits of going to Kinko's.''

''By saying that you have ideas and Kinko's helps you communicate them,'' she added, ''we're now pushing out to the emotional side.''

The decision to shift the emphasis, Ms. Turner said, was based on research among customers ''trying to understand why they use Kinko's instead of someone else.''

''If you're considered a product, someone down the street can have your product at a better price,'' she added, ''and you're toast. If you're considered a service, you're their friend, and that generates loyalty.''

The campaign starts with four playful television commercials that present life moments, exaggerated for effect, when services from Kinko's prove surprisingly useful. All end with an announcer's assertion that ''sometimes, it's not just what you say, but how you say it.''

For instance, in one spot, police use an overhead slide projector to make a presentation to persuade robbers cornered inside a bank to surrender.

''We've assembled officers here, here and here,'' a police official proclaims, gesturing to points on a diagram projected on a wall, ''as well as sharpshooters here and here.''

Pause. A robber emerges from the bank and asks: ''The sharpshooters. Where are they again?''

In a second commercial, when a flight ''stuck in Idaho'' prevents a football coach from being with his players for a big game, he communicates with them by means of a video conference; a TV set is rolled from the locker room onto the field so he can follow the team's performance.

In a third spot, a man offers a pad of flip charts to a woman to bolster his proposal of marriage.

A fourth commercial features chickens in a henhouse listening to a farmer's speech, supplemented with graphs, enticing them to increase egg output. The alternative, he warns, can be seen on a chart labeled ''Plan B,'' depicting a bucket of fried chicken.

''It's the classic product demonstration, but with the twist of putting people in unexpected situations,'' said Clay Williams, a managing partner and creative director at TBWA/ Chiat/Day, who worked on the campaign with his partner, Chuck Bennett.

''This is a pretty dry category with not a whole lot of excitement built in,'' Mr. Williams said. ''But looking at the output of a Kinko's as a reflection on the consumer personally, it's possible to establish a real emotional tie to the place.''

TBWA/Chiat/Day is known for humorous work that entertains consumers, particularly its campaigns for longtime clients like Energizer, Nissan and Taco Bell. But there is a contentious debate along Madison Avenue over whether yuks generate bucks -- that is, whether entertaining ads actually stimulate sales.

''There is a lot of criticism of humor for humor's sake,'' said Mr. Bennett, who is also a managing partner and creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day. ''But here the humor comes out of the brand, and the brand is at the center of the ads.''

Rough cuts of the commercials were tested with consumers, he added, who responded by ''telling us they were appreciative of the humor and of the humorous truth in the spots, where Kinko's more or less comes to the rescue.''

Mr. Williams said, ''If you give short shrift to selling, there's nothing funny about that when the account goes in review.''

The commercials will appear on programs that often carry pitches for business services like ''60 Minutes'' and ''Dateline,'' as well as on what Ms. Turner called ''programs watched by a younger, 'doer'-oriented group'' like ''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' and ''Politically Incorrect.''

Similarly, the print ads will appear in mainstay business magazines like Fortune, she added, as well as in publications new to Kinko's like ESPN Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair and Wired.

The print ads adopt the same tongue-in-cheek tone as the commercials. For example, one ad shows a ''Dear John'' letter with a fever chart tracking a steep decline in ''amount of love for you.''

There is a ''P.S.'' in the form of a pie chart labeled ''Who to blame: you, 3 percent; me, 97 percent.''

If for some reason the campaign does not work, perhaps TBWA/ Chiat/Day can send that chart to Kinko's.

Photo: Commercials for Kinko's show the company's products being used in offbeat ways, like a video conference with an absent football coach. (Kinko's Inc.)